Happy Friday, and happy Friday the 13th at that! We are rounding out the week with a re-cap of the recent happenings worth mentioning in the Fulcrum world.

Awards season is upon us, and several of Fulcrum’s titles and authors were honored with awards this week. It’s always a nice feeling when hard work pays off, so congratulations to everyone that was involved in the creation of these books!

Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary(ISBN: 978-1-55591-719-7, $22.95) by Steve Friesen, was selected as a finalist for the 2011 Colorado Book Awards, in the Biography/History category. The winners will be announced on Friday, June 24th, during the 20th Annual Colorado Book Awards ceremony during the Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Tickets can be purchased for $10 online at the Colorado Humanities website.

Tattooed Lady: A History (ISBN: 978-1-93310-226-1, $27.00) by Amelia Klem Osterud also received recognition from the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, as it was named a Finalist in the Historical Non-Fiction category.

Buffalo Unbound: A Celebration (ISBN: 978-1-55591-735-7, $16.00) by Laura Pedersen received two awards this week. Buffalo Unbound was selected as a Finalist for the International Book Awards in the Humor category and was also a Winner in the Humor/Comedy category of the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

Cheers to everyone on this great week of awards! Head over to the Fulcrum website or your favorite bookstore to pick up any of these award-winning books.

Valentine’s Day is cheesy. I was given a large (I mean, LARGE) red bear by a Valentine’s Day date about 7 years ago. I was 20 at the time. Unfortunately, I had given away all of my stuffed animals by junior high, so a red stuffed bear with a shiny heart on its tummy kind of made me sick in mine. Not only did the date insist I accept the bear when I tried to give it back to him with a “Oh, no, you shouldn’t have,” he also had a very small car, so the bear sat on my lap driving to and from dinner that night. I could barely see around the monstrosity of fluff as he sped down the freeway. I would have preferred to tie it to the roof of the car…

That was a bad Valentine’s Day.

Luckily, there are other options than large red stuffed bears to give your date. May I recommend one, as a scarred February 14 victim of 7 years ago?

Give her a book. Give her a book that she really wants to read. Give her a book she would buy for herself. Something she would LOVE. Give her this book:

We at Fulcrum LOVE this book. We would buy this book for ourselves. It is beautiful, informative, it will make you appreciate the birth of a counterculture and all your tattooed friends even more. And, it is about women. Wonderful, strong, gutsy, fun women of yore. Women love this stuff. And you will have a Happy Valentine’s Day.

As we were putting the finishing touches on our Tattooed Lady book, all kinds pop culture references to tattooed ladies started popping up!

First we found out that the popular TV series, Heroes is introducing a new character this fall- The Tattooed Lady! Then, in line with the fact that author Amelia Klem Osterud is a tattooed librarian herself, we were tickled to find out the Texas Library Association (TLA)had put out a Tattooed Ladies of TLAcalendar for the TLA Library Disaster Relief Fund.

"18 months of well-read and well-illustrated women of the Texas library community"

Our table was literally in the furthest corner of the hall, along the small press aisle, but those tenacious librarians still managed to find us! I had terrific conversations with librarians from all over the US and from all types of institutions (one guy was the librarian for Nissan!).

Everyone seemed to love our Tattooed Lady book, even more so when I explained that it was written by a tattooed librarian! That tattooed librarian, Amelia Klem Osterud joined me Monday, to meet and greet librarians and walk the floor, looking for opportunities for her book (out in November).